It has been a few weird weeks for me. Due to a financial aid problem I am not taking classes this quarter. I am also however not working, but am looking for work this quarter and would really like to find something I can do part-time to full-time since I will only taking classes part time for the next few quarters. I am doing a science sequence and can’t take the class concurrently.
Which means I’ve been applying for jobs. I wonder sometimes if this blog is going to get me in trouble and what happens if an employer googles me? I sometimes think maybe it can be a good thing for example on my resume I don’t have that I ran for office. I just don’t know where to put that on my resume or how it relates to anything.
And then there is the thing that has REALLY been bothering me. I’ve been riding in rush hour traffic this past week. I’ve been driving around the city on the freeway with the 9 to 5 rush. I’ve driving in Mexico City in rush hour multiple times and that doesn’t suck because I know to expect it in the largest city on earth. And while I’ve never done driving in the United States during rush hour traffic it is something much more than the traffic that is disturbing me.
It is all these people, hundreds of thousands of them, (just in this Midwestern city in Ohio, forget cities across the country and globe) driving to their 9 to 5 jobs in the morning and then back again the afternoon. Day after day, week after week. They drive into this ugly concrete buildings at nine in the morning. At lunch time they eat crappy processed frozen microwaveable meals at lunch because they are cheap and easy. Then they drive home at five pm with everyone else. They buy their homes in the suburbs sometimes further and further out only making them spend even more time in their cars. I was with a friend one afternoon around 5pm and there were cars and cars in line for the ATM. I pondered out loud why so many people would be at the ATM. My friend responded “It is Friday. Payday. They’ve been waiting all week for their money.â€Â
Is this what awaits me? Buying a house in the suburbs, making ends meet, being glad if I can get a job that offers health insurance, and on Fridays going to the ATM so I can purchase more plastic goods and meals at corporate chains, and happy hour with my co-workers at Applebees? And if I can afford to do the above, then I have led a “successful life� If that isn’t success what is? Is going to indie art shows and living downtown in a hip neighborhood success? Isn’t that just as repetitive as the 9 to 5 person? I feel like I am trying to get a job to gain access to a ticky-tacky house world, that I don’t even want in to.
It reminds me of the song Little Boxes:
Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of tickytacky
Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same
There’s a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.And the people in the houses all went to the university
Where they were put in boxes and they came out all the same,
And there’s doctors and there’s lawyers, and business executives
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.And they all play on the golf course and drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children and the children go to school
And the children go to summer camp and then to the university
Where they are put in boxes and they come out all the same.And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.
“I feel like I am trying to get a job to gain access to a ticky-tacky house world, that I don’t even want in to.” I HEAR YA!
I am glad to be one of the few Latinos/Mexicans who proudly preserve this unambitious nature about the future. I mean, yes, I want a good job, but no I don’t want to work 24/7 to live like a king. I mean, I just want to be happy, even if that means I won’t be perceived as successful by the majority of Americans.
I don’t even know what I think it means to be successful anymore! I first heard that song at a pete seger / arlo guthrie concert when I was about 6. My parents did a good job raising a kid who wants to buck the system.
I still believe we can change the world, but I have no idea how. Do we sell out when we try to work from the inside? I know lots of people who are happy living in their little boxes.
Also, I do think that living in a trendy neghborhood and attending all the right bars and parties is the exactly same thing as little boxes. Conforming to someone else. Even if you enjoy it.
That is *exactly* what Anna (my wife) sings every time we drive through the suburbs. Funny.
you are already successful in my book.
hey, here’s an idea to get something out of driving so much. i download Amy goodman’s show, democracy now, and other podcasts, burn them into a cd, and then i listen to it while driving.
/me hugs his burbbox
Sometimes I walk through the canyon-like streets and alleys of big cities and I look up at all those shiny sky-scrapers of glass and steel. I see their lights and occasionally a passing silhouette and I wonder to myself, what the fuck is it that all these people do all day, every day.
This post resonates well since I’m bouncing back into the workforce. I’m applying for a non-profit organization that has a pretty mission, vision, has many multi-disciplinary initiatives benefiting the community and doing great work And the workers work 40+ hours a week, with heavy work loads. Unfortunately mostly everything, academia, businesses, non-profits, schools resemble the same thing–hierarchies, competitiveness, and working your ass off to survive.
I propose the work hour week is cut down to 30 hours, that we have six to seven weeks of vacation time yearly–and flex time available. Where workers are seen as individuals who some have families to take care, other interests, a life outside work. Not the opposite.
There is something to be said for hierarchy – it is very effective at produces extremely complex things, which would be beyond the abilities of any single person to accomplish. We benefit from the result of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of person hours every time we load this page, or talk on a cell phone, or hop in a car.
Hierarchy and competition is what made those things, and many others, affordable to the masses.
As for work/life balance, it’s an attitude. Except for the very toughest stretches when I’m working 80-90 hours weekly, I can always find lots of time for my children, my wife and myself. My weekends are sacred, as are the couple of hours nightly I spend with my kids. Everything else is negotiable, including sleep :)
I think the real problem one of meaning. If you have no sense of meaning, than having more free time is an empty thing, more vacuum to fill with TV. If you have meaning, then even an hour a week of free time will keep you going.
Now if only I could get a job as a philsopher. Maybe Bernard-Henri Levy needs an apprentice.
> feel like I am trying to get a job to gain access to a ticky-tacky house world
Screw it, live simple, be happy, humanity will self implode or ‘experience a massive correction’ before too long anyways. When that happens, all this cashmoney ratrace crap won’t mean a thing. Four people making federal minimum wage can own a huge $150K commune in 7 years. 8 clams cuts that to 4 years or less and so on. But nooo, everyone wants their own thing so they don’t have to watch each others kids and parents, hear their roomates humping or share the friggin lawnmower. Mexico, beam me up!
In my opinion work/life balances real problem are more structural not so much “individual” as you state. I place the pendulum of critique on employers/companies popular trend of the bottom line of money over individual quality of life at all costs as dentrimental to most. It is a race to the bottom. Wal-Mart, the largest employer in the country is a great example of effectiveness the way you define it and many anti-worker’s collectives, unions, and living wage and health care benefits crowd will disagree with me.
Sure, hierarchies produce a lot of effectiveness but they also can easily go wrong. Enron, so called Energy crisis in California a few years ago, WorldCom…do I need to say more? And we’re talking about thousands of peoples’ livelihoods that more than likely had the nice work/life balance attitude. When it came down to it–it didn’t matter–how many hours employees willingly “overworked” since someone/many on the hierarchy was busy being too effective. That’s the danger and it is a product of unbridled competition, hierarchy and “effectiveness”. I’m not suggesting socialism, rather a checks systems that will redefine effectiveness not only for the “risktaking” business men/women, CEO but for the rest of the labor pool as well. How is an agency/company effectively contributing to an individuals’ quality of life? It begins with redifining progress from the upside down meaning it has now. Employers benefit with employees wholesome well-being because healthier (mentally, physically) employees equates less turnover, sick days taken, more “actual productivity” in working hours.
Time quality vs. quantity I hear you-I can’t help but bring up women that I do know, accepting their way of life of having to leave their child 12 hours a day at childcare, every single day of the week. And are qualitavely speaking are doing a great job with the one hour of actual interaction they have with their child. It is inherently wrong to not have a choice, presuming most people that work this much don’t really have one. And if you disagree with me on this–then our worldviews are different and I’m okay with that, I’ll agree to disagree with you. While I see how I can do something about changing my life into the proposals I mentioned with like minded people. People that are also hardworking, with work/life balance “practical definitions” that suit them, and are trying to redefine effective to also mean higher quality of life without having to sell their souls to their employer 60 hours a week or three jobs all week long.
What a great thread!
We’ve just been visiting with assorted in-laws in the Southwest US. I came home with a parody of the ticky-tacky song whirling through my head. Instead of “Little Boxes”, my song is called “Bigger Boxes”.
Bigger boxes on the hillside,
Bigger boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Bigger boxes, stucco boxes,
Bigger boxes, all the same.
There’s a tan one, and a beige one, and a brown and terra-cotta one,
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same.
It’s amazing how few of the words in the remaining verses need to be changed. Dry martinis are no longer the trendy drink, but that’s about it. I did invent a few more verses about the houses and how the curly streets and similar street names are dizzying, and how the homeowners’ associations prevent the houses from ever turning into anything personal. These places could be peopled by zombies and no one would know.
At least Levittown (subject of the original song) was not cursed with this kind of thing, and looks much better now.
We haven’t lived our lives this way, and my husbands siblings just can’t understand it. At least DH’s father understands, so that is something.
Thanks for this thread!
Fab, you’ll get no arguments from me (except for a a teeny one, below)
Reading back, I realized I was taking my particular situation and applying to everyone, and I know it doesn’t.
Regarding hierarchy: while the implementation of hierarchies can go wrong, and while it definitely favors the hierarchy (and in particular, its leaders), it makes things possible which would have otherwise been completely impossible – such as this conversation :)
happy dia de las/los valientes que se atreven a amar